Judging Threats

How Analysis Helps U.S. Marshals Service Gauge Harm to Judicial Officials

Over the last 20 years, through three assassinations of federal judges, security experts have been trying to develop the expertise to forecast when a threat to a judge or other members of the judicial family may become life-threatening. This expertise is especially critical when it is not feasible to assign protective details for all of the judges who receive threats each year. Last year alone judges and other judicial officials received 650 threats or inappropriate communications.

In an attempt to better assess the danger, U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) researchers studied the more than 3,000 threats received since 1980 and their outcomes. What they and other researchers learned challenged the accepted wisdom that a direct threat represents the clearest danger. Research showed that it is not always the person who threatens who poses the greatest danger. Frederick (Ted) Calhoun, head of USMS Operational Research and Development, has been involved in the development of a program to evaluate inappropriate communications that takes this conclusion into consideration. “Typically, the person who really wants to kill someone won’t announce it,” said Calhoun. If this is unnerving, Calhoun hastens to add that the situation is not hopeless. “There are identifiable behaviors,” he said, “and under the leadership of Director Eduardo Gonzalez the Marshals Service has shifted our focus to look at those.”

The process begins with an analysis of the inappropriate communications. Although judges and other members of the judicial family know to relay a direct threat from an individual to the U.S. Marshals Service, deputies also would like to hear about inappropriate communications. These are communications that may not be explicit threats, but may cause concern. For example, a threat may be as direct as, “You’ll get yours,” but inappropriate communications can encompass stalking, pseudo-legal court filings, obsessive admiration, or even references to bodyguards, security, or safety. Although roughly 14 percent of all threats are from habitual threateners, each of whom may send 40 to 50 threats a year, no threat should be taken lightly. Anyone receiving threatening or inappropriate communications should report them immediately to the Marshals Service. Each federal district has a threat investigator to handle these com-munications. These investigators can look at a wide range of areas during their investigations, including conducting record checks and interviewing the persons making the threats or inappropriate communications, family members, or co-workers.

The first priority of the Marshals Service is to make certain the judge or staff member is safe. The official may be interviewed to determine if anything unusual has occurred at home, at work, or while traveling. “Many inappropriate communications are from people who may be very angry over the outcome of a court case,” Calhoun said, “and the protectee may even know the individual and be able to provide information to help the threat investigator assess the seriousness of the situation.”

Once safety is assured, the threat or inappropriate communication is sent to the Marshal Service’s Analytical Support Unit, where research analysts enter what is known about the communication and the threatener into a nationwide statistical database. Thousands of threats or communications reported since the 1980s are in the database, along with their outcomes. Each entry has been catalogued by upwards of 30 identifying variables, including date of the communication, how it was delivered, if the threatener was identified, the motive, etc. Any new threat or inappropriate communication and its variables will be compared to the cases in the database where the outcomes were known. Although the majority of cases in the database show nothing happened after the initial communication, 3.9 percent had violent outcomes. A violent outcome may be assigned, for example, if a judge is threatened but a witness in the case is harmed.

Another step in the analysis is the MOSAIC 3 (M-3) computer-based system. The original MOSAIC was developed by Gavin de Becker, an authority on celebrity protection. Customized to fit the particular needs of the Judiciary, M-3 assesses and screens inappropriate communications and threats through a series of questions about the behavior and background of the subject. Each answer is assigned a weight based on the importance the response has in predicting danger. Some of the questions look at the presence of “inhibitors” in a threatener’s life: the things, such as home, family, and job, that may be lost if they follow through on a threat. “It’s important to consider,” said Debra Jenkins, chief of the Analytical Support Unit, “that some of these inhibitors may be jeopardized through court cases.”

Based on interviews with the protectee, the database results, M-3, and the district’s investigative results, the Marshals Service develops the most appropriate protective response for that particular case. According to Dennis Chapas, chief of the Administrative Office Court Security Office, who first used MOSAIC in assessing threats and inappropriate communications at the Supreme Court, the threat investigation and assessment program has allowed the Marshals Service to expedite the assessment part of the investigation, which may shorten the time protective 24-hour details are assigned to judges and minimize disruption of their normal schedules. “The Marshals Service’s initiative in this area has been very proactive,” said Chapas. “They are one of the few federal law-enforcement agencies to establish a threat investigation and assessment program and use a state-of-the-art computer-based program, like MOSAIC, as a tool in evaluating threats and inappropriate communications.”